[Election-Methods] A Better Version of IRV?

[fsimmons at pcc.edu]

> Forest Simmons wrote (Sun Jul 6 16:36:32 PDT 2008 ): > 
> There is a lot of momentum behind IRV.? If we cannot stop it, 
> are there some tweaks that would make it more liveable?
> Someone has suggested that a candidate withdrawal option would 
> go a long way towards ameliorating the damage.
> Here's another suggestion, inspired by what we have learned from 
> Australia's worst problems with their version of IRV:
> Since IRV satisfies Later No Harm, why not complete the 
> incompletely ranked ballots with the help of the rankings of the 
> ballot's favorite candidate?
> The unranked candidates would be ranked below the ranked 
> candidates in the order of the ballot of the favorite.
> If the candidates were allowed to specify their rankings after 
> they got the partial results, this might be a valuable improvement.
> Forest

Chris Benham replied:

> Forest,
> To me in principle voter's votes being commandeered by 
> candidates isn't justified.

Commandeered?  

The voter ranks all she wants to and the remaining candidates are ranked (later, i.e. below) by the voter's 
favorite or perhaps, as Steve Eppley has suggested, by the voter's specified public ranking. 

Since IRV satisfies LNH, what's the harm in this?

In Australia, where (in single winner elections) most of the voters copy candidate cards, this would save 
them a lot of bother.

> This particular horrible idea would create a strong incentive 
> for the major power-brokers
> to sponsor the nomination of a lot of fake candidates just to 
> collect votes for one or other
> of the major parties.

Am I mising something here?  I thought IRV was clone free.

> How do you think it "might be a valuable improvement"?? What 
> scenario do you have in
> mind?

(Besides the aboved mentioned advantage):

In conjunction with the candidate withdrawal option, it might enable the (other) losing candidates to save the 
Condorcet candidate, or otherwise compensate for IRV's non-monotonicity.
 
> And what do you have in mind as? "Australia's worst problems 
> with their version of IRV"?

It has degenerated into a defacto second rate version of Asset Voting.

> 
> Why do you want to "stop" IRV? Do you agree with Kathy Dopp? 
> that? IRV is worse than 
> FPP?

I would stop IRV if we could get a better method in its place.

If we cannot stop IRV, why not search for acceptable tweaks that would improve it?

It is better than FPP in some ways and worse in others, especially in complexity.

Do you think that Asset Voting is worse than FPP?

Just to clarify, I think that Condorcet Methods and Range, though better than IRV, share this complexity 
defect with IRV to some degree.  I have suggested the same tweak for them.  

In fact, that is the essence of DYN, wihich is simply carrying this tweak to its logical conclusion in the case 
of Range, which is the only one of the three (Range, Condorcet, and IRV) that satisfies the FBC.

This tweak works best for Range, because (in the case of Range) the ballot that accomodate this tweak is 
of the extremely simple "Yes/No/Favorite" style.  The Favorite category could easily be augmented to 
include Eppley's "Published Ballots" idea.

Forest